Amazon CEO says discovery is Apollo 11 rocket engines

By Elizabeth Landau, CNN

Updated 2:40 PM ET, Fri July 19, 2013

Apollo mission engines recovered5 photos

Saturn V engine parts – A team of researchers led by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has recovered pieces of the engines of the Saturn V rocket that sent astronauts to space during the Apollo era. This is the "Saturn V stage structure."

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Apollo mission engines recovered5 photos

Saturn V engine parts – This is a thrust chamber. "Many of the original serial numbers are missing or partially missing, which is going to make mission identification difficult," Bezos said on his website.

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Apollo mission engines recovered5 photos

Saturn V engine parts – The thrust chamber and fuel manifold, pulled out of the ocean. "Each piece we bring on deck conjures for me the thousands of engineers who worked together back then to do what for all time had been thought surely impossible," Bezos wrote.

Saturn V engine parts – This is a nozzle. "We've seen an underwater wonderland -- an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines that tells the story of a fiery and violent end, one that serves testament to the Apollo program," Bezos said on his website.

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Story highlights

Conservator found serial number of Apollo 11 rocket engine

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos had sought to confirm engines were from that famous mission

A Bezos-led team recovered the engines in March from the depths of the Atlantic

Saturday marks the 44th anniversary of the 1969 moon landing

Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos rescued sunken treasure in the Atlantic this year: components of two F-1 rocket engines. Now he says he has verified that they are engines from Apollo 11, the first mission that took U.S. astronauts to the moon.

The timing, as Bezos is aware, is appropriate. Saturday is the anniversary of the 1969 moon landing.

"44 years ago tomorrow Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon, and now we have recovered a critical technological marvel that made it all possible," Bezos wrote on his blog.

One of the conservators discovered that the number "2044" had been stenciled in black paint on the side of one of the massive thrust chambers. He found it while using a black light and a special lens filter.

This 2044 was not a mystery. According to Bezos, it corresponds to NASA number 6044, the serial number for F-1 Engine No. 5 from the Apollo 11 mission.

The conservator continued his work on this thrust chamber and, after removing more corrosion, found a stamp on the metal surface that said "Unit No 2044."

"Conservation is painstaking work that requires remarkable levels of patience and attention to detail, and these guys have both," Bezos said of the Kansas conservators.

An Internet retail mogul might seem an unusual patron of Apollo 11 artifacts and history. But Bezos said he was inspired to dream big by watching the original moon mission as a 5-year-old in 1969.

Jeff Bezos said a conservator identified a serial number proving the a rocket engine came from the Apollo 11 program.

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Apollo rockets recovered from ocean

The Amazon chief announced in March that his team of researchers had discovered a set of giant rocket engines that he described as "an underwater wonderland -- an incredible sculpture garden of twisted F-1 engines." They were found in 14,000 feet of water off the Florida coast.

F-1 engines powered the Saturn V rocket carrying Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins on the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. At an altitude of about 38 miles, the first stage of the spacecraft, including the engines, separated. These parts were considered destroyed or lost forever.

Bezos had said in 2012 that he wanted to find the Apollo 11 rocket engines but noted that many serial numbers are completely or partly missing.

"The components' fiery end and heavy corrosion from 43 years underwater removed or covered up most of the original serial numbers," he wrote on his blog Friday.

Each of the engines weighs nearly 9 tons, and they came in a cluster of five. They provided 32 million horsepower by burning 6,000 pounds of fuel every second, and together, they lifted the largest rocket in history 38 miles above the Earth in less than three minutes.

After separation, the rocket engines made their re-entry at 5,000 miles per hour, Bezos said, and then plummeted into the ocean. That's where they remained, undiscovered for decades, until Bezos' team found them using sophisticated sonar.

"The technology used for the recovery is in its own way as otherworldly as the Apollo technology itself," Bezos wrote in March. "The Remotely Operated Vehicles worked at a depth of more than 14,000 feet, tethered to our ship with fiber optics for data and electric cables transmitting power at more than 4,000 volts."

His team felt the echoes of the moon mission as they probed the icy depths of the ocean: "The blackness of the horizon. The gray and colorless ocean floor."

Having taken space venturers to the moon, the engines are now the treasure of a different breed of explorers. Bezos said he intends to put the hardware on display "where just maybe it will inspire something amazing."